Chapter LV: (Not So) Dull
February 20, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/one month later
UNSC Inconvenience, in orbit over Aztlan, Eta Cassopie System
Yeah, turns out that a month doing pretty much nothing but reading, sleeping, loitering, working out occasionally, and the occasional sex is really something that the guy up there designed to torture us mortals. Well, save for the sex, that part was pretty great. Sex is pretty much great in every situation. Every situation that involves consent from both involved parties.
Yeah, boring month with occasional stints that gave me hope and a reason not to put myself in cryo to be awakened upon emergency, although that was technically against regulations. Then again, so was sex or any kind of relationship between servicemen. How do I keep returning to the sex part?
Then, just when I was starting to wish for a reasonably sized Covenant fleet to show up in the system and start ransacking some stations or habitats, a Covenant fleet showed up on the system. Unfortunately, it wasn't reasonably sized. Well, in a way it was, but since the Eta Cassopie Defense Fleet was about equal in size to the enemy group of ships that had decided to jump into our system. Yup.
I'd have to start wishing for large numbers of sexually open beautiful women to start popping up into my life every now and then. Of course, I'd also have to throw in the occasional wish for Marina to become more sexually open herself. I had to stop myself before I made up to many distracting mental images. Nah, too late.
"So what now?" Pavel asked me.
"Nothing yet," I replied, washing away the improper images from my mind. "Right now the only thin we can do is get our armored boots and put all of our gear someplace within easy reach," I said in a grandfatherly tone.
"Ok, I know that."
"I know you know that, that's why I keep saying it."
Pavel threw me something that might or might have not been a codpiece. I skillfully turned my head around so that it hit me in the head instead of the face. I was partially successful as the metallic item connected with my jaw.
"Ouch!" I said. I meant it.
"Sissy," he said.
I rubbed my jaw for a little bit and then threw him my shoulder plate. Pavel managed to put his hand up to protect his face, the protective plate hit him in the forearm and might've hurt him. Pavel, as s true male didn't show any pain whatsoever. I laughed and he tossed me back my shoulder plate. It probably wasn't healthy to throw metallic objects at the man that was supposed to have your back during combat. We're weird like that.
I was now dressed up in my "combat" pants and my armored boots. I had my ODST t-shirt. My combat shirt was neatly positioned next to the rest of my armor in case that I had to quickly put it on. Otherwise I only had my battle rifle slung over my back and my trusty pistol strapped to my thigh. We were ready to kick some serious alien ass (for a brief period of time as opposed to a long battle) at moment's notice. The alarms were already blaring for us marines to get set. Right now our orders were pretty much to run to the escape pods and wait for the evacuation order. Me and Pavel, on the other hand, would instead remain with the captain on the bridge until the abandon ship order came. Once that happened, we would take a quick trip to the pod bays. You know the rest.
"Six cruisers, two CPV-class heavy destroyers, and ten frigates," one bridge crewmember was announcing.
"Damn," an unfamiliar voice muttered.
I turned the corner and saw a thin man's face projected on a screen. Judging by the number of stars and stripes on his shoulders and his big hat, I'd have guessed he was the admiral of this defense fleet.
"Very well then," the man continued. "No hope in evacuating those civilians then?" he asked.
"Not with those three corvettes hanging back, sir," Brooks replied.
"Very well then. Order for general evacuation of the population and ask for volunteers, you know, the usual," he ordered.
"Already on it admiral," another man replied from a different screen, he was wearing Army BDU's.
"Good…"
There were a few moments of silence as the crews of twenty-two different ships waited for orders.
"Assume defense pattern seventeen, twenty kilometer spread between our ships, single file. We'll reposition as soon as we know where they intend to land," the admiral said with an authoritative voice. "Send a couple of slipspace probe-messages to Reach, Psi Serpentis, and Sigma Octanus."
"Roger that, sir," another man answered from yet another screen.
"Clancy, start mining the space in front of us with nuclear mines. Then get the hell out of here."
"Of course admiral."
That must've been the captain of the ONI prowler assigned to our battle group, those guys were supposed to be the best when it came to maneuvering and stealth. Never really had the pleasure to meet one. The guy would plant some mines and those would be repositioned if necessary. The little cubes of death were invisible against the cold vacuum of space and nothing other than a good old Mark-I eyeball visual scan would be able to spot it. Those things would probably take out three of the Covenant ships while the MAC barrage would take care of perhaps another two with weakened shields. Then the real battle would begin.
"Very well, good luck gentlemen," the admiral said tiredly and his image flickered out of the screen, replaced instead by a UNSC logo before the screen disappeared into the floor.
"You heard the admiral, position the ship lieutenant," Brooks ordered.
"Yessir," the ship's human pilot replied. Right now Eliza would be very busy preparing all of the systems for a battle and triple-checking every single IFF tag four times. That makes twelve times total, kids.
"Are the slipspace probes away?" Brooks asked.
"Yes," some random sailor said. "Now every single UNSC ship in Sector Three will be definitely alerted to the covvies presence her, sir. In about a week."
"Well, we might not have a week," Brooks muttered.
It was true, usually, naval engagements lasted about ten minutes before whatever fleet was loosing broke off. Unless, of course, one of the fleets was defending an important point, say, a planet perhaps. Whenever that happened, whichever side was losing (usually us) retreated to the far side of the planet. Then it became some sort of chess game on a cosmic scale, with the remainder of both fleets trying to encircle and surround each other to deliver the final blow. That usually lasted a little bit longer since the survivors were busy tending to their wounds, repairing themselves, calling for backup, and deploying an invasion army. You know, typical galactic-scale war stuff.
"Castillo, Klaus," Brooks snapped suddenly. "You two might wish to get the rest of your armor on."
"I was just about to ask for your permission, sir," Pavel said with a smile.
We headed back to our room and put on our battle clothes. They were technically the same as regular fatigues only that they had some sort of weaving that dissipated heat effectively. Effectively my ass. I had gotten second-degree burns from a plasma pistol shot that flew five inches from my arm or leg. I hated to think what would've happened to my skin without those clothes.
Well, the undersuit went first, and immediately after I put on my urban camouflage pants and shirt. Those were the ones that contained the heat-dissipating weave. Then went the rest of my armor. I double checked my armor twice and made sure that it was ready to be sealed at moment's notice. If there was a hull breach there was a chance that I'd survive in vacuum for a few minutes until someone came to pick me up. It had happened before. I could use my pistol or rifle to maneuver as well.
Let's just hope it didn't come to that.
We made our way back to the bridge, now fully armed and armored. There was a sensation of power that came with being clad in the (third) best armor that humanity had to offer. The sensation that was boosted by the looks of cautious fear and grudging respect that other servicemen gave you whenever they saw you walking by. The looks of relief and sometimes even hope when you were sent to provide to support. I liked to think that those looks and thoughts were directed at us for a reason, because we had deserved them over and over again.
"Captain," I said as soon as we were back in the bridge.
"Staff Sergeant, " he said. "You might want to start heading to your pods soon."
"We'll wait on you captain," Pavel said with a nod.
"Very well, let's begin."
As I said before, space combat is something extremely weird compared to those old naval and aerial battles. For starters, there's no friction, so the ships can bank pretty much as hard as they want. Second of all, there's no noise, so you can only hear the vibrations in the hull and try to gleam some information from them. Thirdly, you are inside a metal box with no windows, so you are pretty much blind to everything going around you, that is frustrating. It is doubly frustrating because the events surrounding the metal coffin you are on board actually do influence the outcome of your life. The best I can compare it to is a game of russian roulette with three bullets in the gun. Not that I would know anything about that.
The captain visibly tensed in the command chair as the battle begun. Our MACs had longer range than their standard energy projectors and plasma torpedoes, so we fired first. The Inconvenience shook twice in quick succession as its modified cannon fired two ferric-tungsten with a deployed uranium core slugs weighting about 600 tons each at the closest destroyer. The first shot took out perhaps 70% of the destroyer's shields, the second took out the remaining energy and crushed the front of the ship. I only knew that because the crewmembers called out the results as soon as the slugs impacted the enemy ship. Seconds later a bunch of Archer missiles flew at the shieldless craft while the MAC received enough energy for a second shot.
"Two torpedoes headed in our direction," someone announced calmly.
"Us or the Kiss This?" Brooks asked.
"Too soon to know… looks like one for each."
"Very well, use emergency thrusters to avoid a direct hit, looks like we'll have to take the blast."
"Roger that, sir."
"Eliza, shut down and evacuate all starboard sections, and collapse the PDGs."
"Right away captain," the AI responded.
"Boost when the plasma torpedo is a kilometer away."
With my rudimentary knowledge of space battles, I knew that that was pushing it. One kilometer was only the equivalent of the length of two UNSC frigates, slightly less. If the Inconvenience used its thrusters a millisecond too late, we would be directly impacted and the most likely outcome would be that a large portion of the ship would be instantly vaporized and the rest would simply serve as an immobile target for the energy projectors. Hell, they could even send jackal rangers at us just for the hell of it.
"Now," the pilot said calmly.
I heard vague noises that reminded me of the pelican engines and knew that the emergency thrusters had been activated, instants later I felt vibrations all around me and the temperature went up by at least a couple of degrees.
"Plasma torpedo detonated one hundred and sixteen meters off the starboard engine. The plating is mostly melted and the adjoining sections are heavily damaged. One casualty, the ship can is still operational," Eliza informed.
"Good, get me a firing solution for that destroyer," Brooks muttered.
"On it," Eliza said. She would probably be done in five seconds, that was saying a lot, AIs can do millions of calculations per second, that she actually had to take the time to account for all the variables. That was done by humans with relatively rudimentary computers just a few years ago. God, technology is awesome.
"MAC is at 98 percent and ready to fire," someone announced.
"Eliza?"
The ship shifted a little before it let off a single shot. I only knew that it moved because the exterior cameras switched the view a little. I gripped my pistol as I waited for the enormous shell to impact the enemy ship. For a piece of metal moving at about a quarter of the speed of light, it certainly took its time.
"Impact. Enemy destroyer damaged," Eliza announced. "Two other MACs have hit the destroyer, it is out of the fight."
"Well done gentlemen," Brooks applauded. "On to the next one."
The battle went on like that for a couple of minutes. We hit a cruiser along with three other destroyers, forcing it to retreat before it blasted two of those destroyers out of the sky (ahem, space). By the time we were done, one destroyer was gone and so were four cruisers. That was a grand total of five shielded craft. For us it had been slightly worse. Six destroyers as well as a frigate had been destroyed. Most of the other ships had received damage ranging from moderate to heavy. We would probably not survive another full-on encounter.
"Captain, the corvettes are closing in."
"Admiral-" Brooks started.
"We got them," the admiral said. "Brooks, prepare your ship for delaying action, evacuate your ground troops immediately. Santiago, take your flotilla and accompany the Inconvenience. Stop those corvettes."
"On it admiral." The voice that belonged to Santiago replied through the comm network.
The admiral flickered out and the ship started moving again. Captain Santiago's flotilla was composed of two destroyers and three frigates of varying purposes. That made two destroyers and four frigates to face off against the corvettes. Six to ten. Normally, a Covenant corvette could be considered a middle point between a UNSC destroyer and a frigate. It was the smallest ship that the Covenant navy had in service and the only one that did not sport energy shields for protection. A confrontation between our own small ships against theirs was something that I could only compare to the sea battles of old on a cosmic scale.
"Eliza, deploy all turrets and redirect 14 percent of the MAC energy towards the guns and the Archer pods cooling system. Give the turrets 12 and the pods 2 percent."
"Understood captain," came the reply.
"Staff Sergeant," the captain said, "abandon ship."
"Sir?"
"That's an order."
Even though I really wanted to, I wasn't going to complain. I'd really rather be stranded somewhere on the dense tropical jungles of Aztlan than being here standing like an idiot without the ability to do anything productive whatsoever.
"Very well captain," I said. "Good luck."
Brooks nodded. "You have two minutes," he said. He meant that he would hold position in orbit for two minutes before he moved the ship to attack the corvettes. That meant that we had two minutes to sprint all the way down to the SOEIV bay and do the jump. That man loved to make us sweat.
Suddenly I found the walls flashing by and I was running as fast as I could (pre enhancements) towards the SOEIV pod. We would have just enough time to hop on those things before the captain decided that he needed to help out the rest of the flotilla taking on the corvettes. Pavel yelled incoherently just to piss me off and perhaps to get himself immersed in the action a little bit. I grabbed a corner and used it to hold on instead of having to stop completely and turn. I jumped a set of stairs and arrived on the SOEIV bay safe and sound with approximately twenty seconds to spare. I looked around and found a couple of pre-loaded magazines and boxes of ammunition that were kept in there at all times. They had moved a small portion of the armory down here expressly for Pavel and myself to make use of whenever we needed to.
I was already loaded up on ammunition, but not what you would call 'fully loaded', I grabbed four extra magazines and shoved them into my assault webbing before I grabbed four grenades, two flashbangs and two fragmentation to add to the two of each that I already had. I jumped into my pod while juggling the four devices with absolutely no regard for safety at all. Pavel did the equivalent by grabbing an ammunition box magazine for his M247L and two frags in addition to a colored smoke grenade in case we needed to mark a location. I jumped on my pod and slammed on the emergency drop button a couple of times before the pod lurched into space.
The bay doors were already open, so I felt the lack of gravity immediately. For a second I wondered how the doors closed quickly enough after the pods left the ship to prevent everything in the bay from being sucked out into space.
Now that I was floating, I craned my neck backwards to see the Inconvenience drifting away after using its thrusters. Dozens of orange dots appeared on its side as archer missiles were fired at the corvettes. I could just make out the plasma and PDG fire in between the two lead craft of both navies before my pod started shaking as it broke atmosphere and I lost sight of the space battle.
Now, I shifted my head and holstered all my grenades to my webbing. I grabbed the two handles on each side of the pod and opened up a communicator with Pavel and a map that detailed all the positions of the UNSC forces in this side of the planet. Of course, we were about fifty kilometers off from the nearest position. Ships usually position themselves away from urban areas whenever a space battle takes place, that prevents any debris from falling on the cities they are supposed to protect. Ground troops are usually quartered in those cities because they are supposed to protect them as well. Makes sense.
I told Pavel to redirect his pod as much as possible in the direction of the nearest garrison. I pulled on hard on the rudder lever and suddenly the pod lurched and stabilized itself just in time for it to deploy its chute. I managed to tilt it sideways a little bit before it automatically faced the floor for the rockets to go off. My window hardened and polarized just as the pod started going through a bunch of branches. The metallic coffin stopped suddenly and I lurched forward from the sudden stop. My body was shaking hard from the impact, the jump had been a little bit rougher than usual.
I was about to open my door when the pod fell sideways, testament of how dangerously close I had been to digging my own grave with my SOEIV.
Mental note: next time, it is probably worth walking a couple extra kilometers instead of risking a horrible death.
I grunted and opened the door. When it didn't fully open I kicked it and instead found myself pushing the pod away from the door. After about ten seconds I managed to push the pod away from a huge tree that had trapped the door. I climbed out of the pod and picked sat on its edge, looking around and taking in the landscape. I found myself staring at the densest, most stereotypical rainforest that I could imagine, complete with fancy colorful plants and animal noises.
"Pavel?" I asked.
"I'm good," came the reply through the helmet mike.
"Great, you're about a hundred meters off my position," I said.
"I know."
There was a couple of seconds of silence.
"Well get here you idiot."
"Fine," he muttered, but after a couple of seconds his IFF tag started moving.
Meanwhile, I started pulling out stuff that could be useful from my pod. I grabbed a couple of ration bars, some extra ammunition, flares, a mini-tent, water-purification tablets, and a rescue beacon. I then grabbed to straps from the back of my pod's back support and pulled. The armored backpack emerged and left a small quadrangular hole in the inside of the pod. I promptly shoved all of the supplies that I had gathered into the backpack and shouldered it.
"Frank."
"That's Staff Sergeant for you," I said.
"Whatever."
"That's insubordination mister."
"Frank…"
"Yes, the closes UNSC garrison is forty-two kilometers away from our current position," I said. "Feel like running a marathon?"
"Or," Pavel suggested, "we could simply walk twelve kilometers until our helmet's transmitters are within range and ask them for pickup."
"Pavel, Pavel, Pavel, always taking the easy road… Good idea."
"I do my best," my squadmate replied.
Having said that we both took a deep breath and started making our way towards the nearest garrison. I started trying to download a map of the area into my helmet HUD, but the satellite reception in here was horrible. That, coupled with the interference from the battle going on in orbit was making progress rather slow, but I managed to get a steady stream. Soon enough I had a very detailed topographic map uploaded into my helmet. Sure, I could've used the standard UNSC military positions map for traveling, but I wanted to avoid any natural hazards on the way. A good way to avoid those is having a map that tells you the concentration of poisonous plants in certain areas, for God's sake, who even takes the time to measure that?
An hour and a half later, twenty kilometers total and twelve in a straight line later, we found ourselves within radio range of the UNSC garrison. Our helmets were more than capable enough to send a signal strong enough to break through anything in between us and the UNSC base that wasn't a chunk of lead more than sixty meters wide, and since those are rare occurrences in nature, I decided that we were good.
"Hello, anyone read me?" I asked.
There was the usual suspenseful static for a couple seconds before I got my response.
"This is First Company of the 1045th, identify yourself."
"Staff Sergeant Frank Castillo and Sergeant Pavel Klaus, ODSTs, we were just emergency-dropped a couple of hours ago from the Inconvenience."
"Wait a moment," the radio operator said.
I waited a moment.
"Looks good, now, what can I help you with?" she asked.
"Well, for starters you could connect us with battlenet," I suggested. "And maybe send some transport to pick us up. We need to meet up with an ONI attaché or an ODST officer. You know, give ourselves a sense of purpose."
There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. "Ok Staff Sergeant, why don't you head here and we'll have a falcon gunship pick you up, should be there in about fifteen minutes."
"Thank you," I said.
"First Company out."
As she said that a waypoint appeared on my HUD and I sent it to Pavel so that he didn't feel left out or anything. We had another kilometer to go, which probably translated to about fifteen minutes of climbing through treacherous terrain and stabbing at spider's the size of your aunt's favorite cat with a combat knife repurposed as a machete. Yep, we were living the life.
Thirteen minutes of climbing through treacherous terrain and stabbing away at spider's the size of your aunt's favorite cat with a combat knife repurposed as a machete later, we found ourselves in what I could only describe as a small plateau of bare rock. We had been climbing upwards for the past hour, something that I hadn't failed to notice, but now I found myself standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the vast tropical rainforest that engulfed about a third of Aztlan's western hemisphere. And that is only the western side of the moon-planet. The other side had equally vast rainforests.
I heard the familiar roaring of a falcon's engines through the suddenly quiet jungle. Within a few moments I spotted the olive aircraft flying towards us. It reached the edge of the cliff and the pilot motioned for us to hop on the craft. As soon as we were on board I strapped myself to the seat and placed my rucksack between my legs after securing it under the seat.
"So how's the situation developing?" I asked.
"Navy is on the run, the Covenant have already started deploying landing forces."
He needn't have told me, because if I had just waited a few more minutes myself I could've seen the three purple corvettes making their way to the ground in the distance, flanking a cruiser.
"Shit."
Hey guy that are actually taking the time to read this (by the way, thanks for that), my post chapter message for today is nothing other than... ANOTHER APOLOGY!
Yeah, I prided myself in being able to post one or even two chapters a day when I started writing this fic, back then I had lots of time in my hands and nothing else to spend it on, so I dedicated myself completely to this. Although I wish that the quality increased with the amount of time I spend writing each chapter, I am afraid that that has not been the case. In any way, I apologize (yet again) and thank you for reading this. Hope you enjoyed it.
-casquis